Author: Charis

Charis is a senior in high school. She enjoys cooking, photography and caring for animals as well as aquariums. Her favorite tv program is the Great British Bakeoff and you'll find a few of the challenging attempts as well as some simple recipes on this blog.
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Mary Berry’s Chocolate Mousse

Originally from a chocolate mousse enticements recipe.

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Mary Berry is my inspiration for baking, I love all of her recipes and thought I should share with you one of her recipes that I recently found. Chocolate mousse! This is the chocolate mousse from her double chocolate entremets. The sponge cake I made for the stripey coating was a disaster as every time I made this dessert, I forgot the butter. Well, the chocolate mousse I made for them couldn’t go to waste, so I ATE IT! Yum yum yum, it was delicious. You might want to double this recipe (even though it’s enough to serve 6 people). The chocolate entremets are filled half way with dark chocolate mousse and then filled with white chocolate mousse. Here is the recipe I followed and there’s a bonus, there is no added sugar apart from the semi – sweet chocolate! Serve this with fresh fruit or for a variation try adding orange extract when you add the butter.

Serves 3 – 6
Ingredients
150 grams semi – sweet chocolate chips
A knob of butter, about 1 teaspoon
2 free – range eggs, separated (you will need to wash them with a little soap and hot water as salmonella lives on the outside of eggs and these won’t be cooked for the mousse)
100 ml heavy whipping cream

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To make the Chocolate Mousse

1. Melt the chocolate in a bain – marie

  • See video how to do this

2. Add the butter, dont stir yet

3. When the butter has melted stir it in, the mixture will begin to thicken up but keep stirring until well combined

4. Mix in the egg yolks to the chocolate mixture, again it will go kind of runny and then thicken up

5. Remove from the heat

6. Whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks, past when you think you are done whisking

7. Take 1/3 of the whisked egg whites and beat it into the chocolaty mixture to make it easier to fold in the rest

8. Fold in the rest of the egg whites in thirds

9. Whisk the whipping cream until stiff peaks but don’t over whisk, and fold into chocolate – egg white mixture

10. Refrigerate and Enjoy!

 

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Gyoza – Japanese Steamed Dumplings

Gyoza - Japanese steamed then fried pork dumplings
Gyoza is one of my favourite dumplings

Gyoza - Japanese steamed then fried pork dumplings

I discovered this when my family and I ate out at a very nice Japanese resturaunt in Florida. They are fairly easy to make but they do require a little bit of patience. There aren’t too many ingredients, most of which you will have on hand or be able to get at your local supermarket.

Makes 30 – 40 dumplings
Ingredients
For the wrappers:
I got this lovely recipe from this website at http://www.justonecookbook.com/recipes/gyoza-wrappers/
2 cups (240 g) all-purpose flour
½ tsp. salt
½ cup (120 ml – 150ml) just-boiled water, add more if necessary
corn starch for dusting
For the filling:
240 grams boneless pork rib or ground pork
200 grams green cabbage, minced
100 grams onion, minced
100 grams spring onions (also known as green onions), minced
1 teaspoon grated ginger
2 teaspoons grated garlicto make the wrappers
2 tablespoons corn starch
1 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon sesame oil (plus more for frying, you can also use vegetable oil)
1 tablespoon oyster sauce

 

To make the wrappers:

You can do this in a mixer or by hand but I was lazy and used a mixer

1. Mix the salt in the flour

2. Add the boiling water

3. Knead the dough until smooth, about 5 – 10 minutes

4. Wrap in plastic wrap and let rest for 30 minutes

 

Time to make the filling!

1. Cut each roll in half

2. Dust surface and dough with cornstarch

3. Lightly flatten each half and roll out using a pasta machine on the lowest setting

4. Fold the dough over and put through the pasta machine again, repeat one more time after this if needed

5. Roll out to about 1 – 2 mm thick and cut out with a 3 inch round cutter or mug

6. Dust each wrapper with cornstarch to stop them from sticking together pork

 

To make the filling

1. If you are using rib pork put it in the food processor and pulse it until you have ground pork

2. Mix the pork with everything except the cabbage, spring onions and onions

3. Mix in the cabbage, spring onions and onions

4. Finish making the wrappers!

 

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Phew! Okay now to make the gyozas

1. Fill each wrapper with about 1/2 tablespoon of filling

2. Brush water around the edges

3. Seal the gyoza as shown in the picture unfortunately we don’t have a video of the process so you might have to go on youtube

4. Fry in oil on medium heat until the bottoms are golden brown (don’t fry the sides, just the bottom)

5. Boiling in already boiling water at a roll for 4 – 6 minutes

6. At this point you can eat them or if you really want that crispy wrapper you can re – fry them if they even make it there!

7. Make a simple sauce with soy sauce and white vinegar and Enjoy!

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The Secret to Good Blueberry Jam

A perfect way to preserve fresh summer fruits

Do you know that old fruits don’t make good jams?  The fruit’s pectin ought to be at the highest level when the fruit is just slightly under ripe in order to produce the right jam consistency. Below are some tips for making blueberry jam.

Making blueberry jam
1) Use 60% sugar.

Sometimes I like cutting down on sugar but when it comes to jam making, it’s important to get the proportion of sugar right. An interesting fact about British standard of jam making, anything less than 60% cannot be classified as jams; they have to be labelled as conserves. This is what set the British jams apart from the rest of the world. Generally you can make jam with 50:50 fruit to sugar ratio but in my experience, I get a more consistent result and higher chance of avoiding runny jams if I use more sugar than fruits.

When we made our last jam, we used 5 cups of blueberries to 3 cups of sugar and it worked! What’s interesting about American cooking is most things are measured in “cups”.  Cups are very convenient but strictly, they are not accurate and cannot be used for sensitive recipes.

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2) For perfect jam – add lemon juice.

Lemon juice provides an acidic environment that helps the jam to set. In this particular recipe, we added just 2 tablespoons of lemon juice to 5 cups of berries boiled with 3 cups of sugar.